OFFSTAGE: Carrie Underwood Feels Nerve-Wracking Emotions Again

(CMT Offstage keeps a 24/7 watch on everything that’s happening with country music artists behind the scenes and out of the spotlight.)

You wouldn’t know it by watching Carrie Underwood‘s performance of “Blown Away” on Thursday night’s (May 3) American Idol, but she was nervous. Really, really nervous. In a backstage interview with Fox All Access
, she admits that singing on the Idol stage gets her heart racing even more than any other kind of live performance. “I’ve been singing my new single and singing album stuff all week long, and I haven’t gotten nervous once,” she said. “And tonight I get here and my heart starts beating so fast and I can’t breathe, and it’s the same thing I went through when I was a contestant. Which is crazy. I’m seven years past that. I shouldn’t be like that anymore.” So even though she admits she spent so much time around Idol — the stage, the lights, the judges, the building — it still just represents an “exciting, scary, nerve-wracking part of my life.” And that every time she comes back, she feels those exact emotions again.